Aaron targets county success to overcome IPL snub
NEW DELHI: Varun Aaron has shrugged off the disappointment of being left unwanted at this year’s India Premier League (IPL) auction with the Indian paceman instead channelling his focus on striving for a successful county stint in England.
Despite being overlooked by all eight IPL franchises, the 28-year-old is now armed with a deal to play for Leicestershire in the early part of the 2018 County Championship, a stint he hopes will put his stuttering career back on track.
“I was not really thinking about whether I’d be picked or not in the IPL auction,” Aaron, who has represented the Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Punjab franchises in the lucrative Twenty20 league, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“It was more a case of which team is going to pick me. But when it didn’t happen, it was a shocker for sure,” added the right-arm bowler, who played his last test in 2015. “But it took me a few minutes to snap out of it. For the amount of hard work I have put in, for all that I have come through, I feel there’s bigger things in store. “When we talk after six months, then I can tell you that it’s the best thing to have happened to me. I really feel this might be the turning point,” he said, looking forward to his spell in England with the Division Two side.
After the snub, Aaron set his sights on county cricket and an unlikely door opened when Leicestershire asked him to fill the ‘overseas player’ void left by Pakistan seamer Mohammad Abbas, who will be busy on national duty. Aaron said he always wanted to experience county cricket and the IPL snub made his decision to head to Britain that much easier. “I even considered skipping IPL last year to play county cricket. I spoke to my colleagues and my coaches who said ‘No, you must play in the IPL, it’s a big thing in the calendar’ and stuff like that,” he said.
“This year what happened is by default... county cricket is really competitive. I know that after I come out of this, what I’m bowling now is going to be maximised by a big margin.”
Aaron burst on to the Test scene in 2011 as a genuine speed merchant in an Indian pace attack of mostly line-and-length bowlers but a spate of injuries ensured he has played only nine tests and the same number of one-day internationals. “I have had so many injuries. Every time I’ve hit form, something has happened,” he said. “Touch wood, the past year’s been really good. I’ve bowled a lot of overs in the (domestic) Ranji Trophy and getting a county deal immediately after that, it’s going to help me a lot.” With India set to tour England later this year and also head there for the 2019 World Cup, Aaron felt the IPL rebuff could actually prove to be a “blessing in disguise”. “While I’m not thinking about it constantly, it would be really stupid to say it’s not something I haven’t thought about,” he said. “At the same time, I can only play for the India team if I do well for Leicestershire. I’m really looking forward to making an impact with Leicestershire.
“I can still do big things. In the coming years, I definitely want to win matches for India abroad.” The paceman from Jharkhand also admitted to having a better understanding of both his body and his craft, pointing to his increased workload in domestic cricket as evidence of this acquired